“We do not believe any group of men adequate enough or wise enough to operate without scrutiny or without criticism. We know that the only way to avoid error is to detect it, that the only way to detect it is to be free to inquire. We know that in secrecy error undetected will flourish and subvert”. – J Robert Oppenheimer.

Damning Questions About Oroville

WUWT carries the story of the Oroville Dam emergency spillway in California. In short, the spillway has been damaged at the same time as the dam itself is close to overflowing, following recent heavy rain.

There will doubtless be many questions asked about the design, integrity and maintenance of the spillway. But one question that should be asked is why the dam was allowed to come close to full in the first place.

As can be seen, nearly all of the major reservoirs across California are at or above average, and many are close to full up.

Of course, reservoir management is a difficult job at the best of times, particularly when dams serve double purposes – water storage and flood control.

But one wonders whether too much attention has been paid to the slew of warnings in recent years from climate scientists and others about permanent drought in California.

For instance:

“California Braces for Unending Drought,” The New York Times reported in May 2016, citing Gov. Jerry Brown’s decision to indefinitely keep in place statewide water conservation measures. Brown also order state agencies to “prepare for a future made drier by climate change,” the Times reported.

There are of course parallels with the Wivenhoe dam in Australia back in 2011. Then the dam was kept at full capacity, despite warnings of heavy rain to come. As a result, subsequent flooding was much worse than it need have been.

It is apparent that those in charge in Queensland placed far too much emphasis on prior warnings of permanent drought.

Perhaps the key lesson from all of this is that what we really need is much better short term weather forecasting, weeks and months ahead. This is what Met Offices should be concentrating resources on, and not trying to guess what might happen in a century time.

Like this:

Related

If the damage only occurred once the water started flowing over the spillway then it might be a bit harsh to criticize them for wanting to store the maximum amount of water. That’s making a couple of presumptions, firstly: that the spillway wasn’t already in such a state that the resulting damage should’ve been an obvious result; secondly that the hydrography of the area doesn’t mean that flooding of property downstream becomes more likely if the spillway is used rather than a steady draw-off. The amount of water entering the reservoir recently means that any decision that could’ve avoided use of the spillway would’ve had to be taken some time back. Even without the ‘Perma-drought’ hype, California usually swings from too much, to too little water, and I think the authorities could expect a lot of criticism in a couple of years if the reservoir ran dry after allowing too much water to escape this year.

From my reading of WUWT it seems that a crack in the spillway was discovered a couple of years ago a bit higher up from the hole. I imagine that water got in through the crack over the years and scoured out the subsurface making the spillway into a ‘bridge’. Then it’s just a matter of time….

Correct, a problem was known but never moved on because the drought was here and there “was time”. Even now, the state government is announcing there is no safety problem or anything. Never admit when they were wrong.

The overgrown emergency spillway (being cleared in a hurry) confirms that, perhaps the most shocking aspect of the whole saga. Annual viewing of original Dam Busters film compulsory for all staff from now on!

Reminds me of the levee problems in New Orleans which caused the horrific damage after Hurricane Katrina. Levee “masters” were political appointees by always corrupt politicians and were never properly managed. When Katrina came, the chickens came home to roost.

I don’t see why a reservoir should not be expected to reach the level it was designed to reach. If I were to ask questions, they would be limited to why the spillway was not maintained in adequate condition to fulfill its function, quite possibly because of authorities with heads full of global warming propaganda and empty of Californian climate history believing that it would never again be needed.

The emergency spillway is to the left of the first picture which shows the main spillway in use and failing. The last picture shows an annotated aerial view that locates the various elements of the dam. The emergency spillway was overgrown and had to be cleared in a great hurry!

It seems to be the same throughout the western world. It’s not that long ago that the people in charge of infrastructure knew what they were doing and how best to do their job. Now all decisions are made by lefty politicians and bureaucrats who have no idea how to organise a pi$$ up in a brewery. Hence all the problems with energy supply, water management, air quality (the diesel fiasco), the list goes on and on.

Hence we have the nine worst words in the English language “I’m from the Government. I’m here to help you”. Not to mention “whenever government tries to make things better it almost invariably makes things worse and the state is, therefore, best cut out of the equation as often as humanly possible.”

In California the largest reservoirs, or man-made lakes, in the U.S. state of California. All thirty-six reservoirs that contain over 200,000 acre feet (0.25 km3) of water at maximum capacity.

Yes, one of man’s biggest contributions to global climate change is the of building dams and the altering of natural watercourses. America has been damming waterways for centuries, while the Russian were draining massive inland lakes like the Aral Sea.
Along with deforestation, the altering of waterway throughout the world has, and will continue, to cause more manmade climate change than any amount of atmospheric CO2 vented by humans in their industrial endeavors.

Dam overflows, spillways should be properly maintained no if nor buts.

In times of excessive rainfall and it can get pretty wet in California, whatever is the primary purpose of the dam; if there is no procedure no, contingency for excess volume – where else is the water going to go irrespective of er even totally superfluous contingency – ‘managed streamflow’. Coz er you know, massive volumes of the wet stuff and gravity cannot be stopped – can it?

Musing on, are they crying “drought” in California – still? And the map is interesting Paul of and about water levels in Ca Damns but knowing the majority of Southern Califorinia/LA water is from Boulder – I wonder what its current level is?

What is worse than failing to take action, is that the entire time (and some before) California has been in this drought, Governor moonbeam (as we know him) and the state have been tearing down other dams to allow better fish flow and basically to heck with water storage. Then he overreacts and slams on all kinds of water controls to which no one south of Santa Barbara paid any attention. Now that we have water again, he is not relaxing some of the water controls which he should. I do not mean all of them, we need to safeguard water for the future, but most of us have been ordered to live on less water with raised prices (tax) which moonbeam will not reduce in spite of having lots of available water.

A great number of us that have lived in Oroville near-to or several decades can’t help but wonder how much less pressure would be put on water management and our communities up North here if S. Cal would find ways to provide their own population with water.
Perhaps they can built a massive water treatment and dispersion plant? Great idea. Cost us residents A LOT less.

There have been comments asking why a reservoir shouldn’t be filled to capacity. The answer is because it’s February, more rain is coming and snowmelt also. Capacity is to be reached at a certain time of the year. Even then, one must be able to anticipate and react quickly if the situation changes and water levels rise.

I think part of what really messed this up was the hole in the spillway. People were afraid the rocks and concrete would created problems downstream. So they didn’t let the water flow out a rate that would keep the dam from requiring the use of the emergency spillway. Then they panicked when they thought the emergency spillway would cause erosion, etc. (Looking at it, that should have been obvious.) If the spillway had remained intact, the situation may not have escalated to the need to evacuate 180,000 people. Panic rarely results in good outcomes.

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